<nettime> Overidentification and/or bust?

[Stevphen Shukaitis <stevphen@autonomedia.org>]

Overidentification and/or bust?
Stevphen Shukaitis

 From Variant,  issue 37, Spring / Summer 2010: http:// 
www.variant.org.uk

In 1987, Laibach, the musical wing of the Slovenian art collective  
Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art, or NSK), released a  
reworked version of the Queen song âOne Visionâ. Whereas the  
original 1985 Queen song was inspired by the groupâs participation in  
Live Aid and espoused a seemingly somewhat vague leftist message of  
unity and world peace, it was vastly transformed in Laibachâs  
reworking. While lyrics about there being one race, vision and  
solution might easily be passed over as innocuous or not even taken  
notice of in the context provided by a Queen performance, the lyricsâ  
submerged obscene meaning becomes readily apparent as it is translated  
into German and played along in a droning, militaristic style.  
Laibachâs version of the song, far from being a cover or simple copy,  
through its transformation draws out and amplifies the grotesque  
parallels between the pleasures of pop culture and fascist modulation  
of crowd emotion through propaganda and epic scale theatricality. But  
why did Laibach do this; famous for always remaining in character, are  
they fascists or not? Laibachâs performances (as well as the work of  
the rest of the projects within the NSK) are premised on undercutting  
straightforward distinctions through the use of totalitarian  
aesthetics and a bastardisation of nationalist themes. Laibach and the  
NSK operate by displaying the imagery, the codes of fascism and state  
power, pushing it to its limit, recombining it with other elements,  
other traditions, forging connections that âexpose the âhidden  
reverseâ of a regime or ideologyâ. Laibach are, and claim to be,  
fascists as much as Hitler was a painter.

This approach of adopting a set of ideas, images, or politics and  
attacking them, not by a direct, open or straightforward critique, but  
rather through a rabid and obscenely exaggerated adoption of them, can  
be referred to as overidentification. While the concept was developed  
within the theoretical armory of Structuralist (Lacanian)  
psychoanalysis (and later further developed by thinkers such as Slavoj  
ÅiÅek and various cultural and political activists), it was the NSK  
Collective that, through their work, forged it into a tool of cultural  
subversion and sabotage to be deployed within the ideologically  
charged context of post-Tito Yugoslavia. In this article, we examine  
the formation of overidentification as a strategy of cultural- 
political intervention uniquely formed from this context. Is  
overidentification useful as a strategy of political intervention for  
an age marked by the presence of cynical distance within cultural and  
social spheres? Or have the various phases of political and economic  
transition that have occurred since Laibachâs founding in the context  
of the Slovenian/ex-Yugoslavian punk movement rendered such methods of  
subversion and deconstruction ineffective? Or is it perhaps possible  
to refound a critical politics and strategy of intervention drawn from  
the work of Laibach and the NSK, transforming their methods and ideas  
to the conditions of the present?

âThe explanation is the whip and you bleedâ
â âApologia Laibachâ (1987)

Since its inception, the NSK expanded to include other activities  
including philosophy, planning, architecture, and many other aspects  
that are part of its now proclaimed status as a âglobal state in  
timeâ. In addition to the collective development of shared themes,  
the various collectives composing NSK emphasise the collaborative  
nature of the project, not crediting individual members for aspects of  
the work and frequently changing the composition of the members  
involved in any given production. As a musical project, Laibach is  
mainly associated with forms of industrial music (as well as  
neoclassical and martial styles), evolving from a very harsh and  
abrasive sound during the early recordings through to one at times  
involving multiple layers of electronics, heavy metal, compositions  
arranged in the form of national anthems, and most recently  
interpreting a series of Bachâs fugues. But Laibach, and the NSK more  
generally, have achieved prominence, notoriety, and infamy perhaps  
less so for their particular aesthetic as much as the historical  
meanings and recontextualisations of the various properties of state  
ideology used in their performances and productions. âLaibachâ  
itself, for instance, is the German name still associated as the one  
used during the fascist occupation of Ljubljana.

The work of Laibach and the NSK frequently draws upon the aesthetics  
of totalitarian and nationalist movements, forging a kind of  
totalitarian kitsch by fusing together elements from varying and  
completely incongruent political philosophies. For instance, the NSK  
logo is a combination of Laibachâs cross logo (borrowed from Russian  
supremacist artist Kasimir Malevich and used as its primary public  
reference point during the years when using the name Laibach was  
banned in Yugoslavia), John Heartfieldâs anti-fascist axe swastika,  
an industrial cog, and a pair of antlers (with the base of the design  
featuring the names of the founding collectives). Even in this small  
example one can see an ambiguous and strange merging of elements; the  
way that the anti-fascist emblem becomes transformed within a  
composition where the relation of the elements to each other changes  
the meaning contained within each of them.

Laibach/NSKâs usage of historical, political, and aesthetic  
readymades render audible their submerged and hidden codes and  
contexts that directed the modes of representation, or what ÅiÅek  
refers to as the hidden underside of systems and regimes. This  
approach to the use of borrowed historical and political elements  
forms the basis of what Laibach/NSK refer to as retrogardism, or the  
formation of the monumental Retro-Avant-Garde. The basic idea of this  
being the non-repression of troubling or undesirable elements of  
historical and social regimes in their work. Rather than repressing  
them, they are highlighted, as they argue that the traumas affecting  
the present and the future can only be addressed by tracing them back  
to and through their sources, working through and processing them. As  
Alexei Monroe argues in his excellent analysis of their work, it is  
not an approach based on constructing a new future by negating the  
past (which in general is the usual relation to time found within  
avant-garde artistic practice), but rather âretrogardism attempts to  
free the present and change the future via the reworking of past  
utopianisms and historical woundsâ. The impact and effect of Laibach/ 
NSKâs work is based on the effects produced by the disjunctive  
synthesis of troubling historical elements and the radical ambivalence  
contained within this.

As has been argued by ÅiÅek and others, socialist democracy was  
sustained by a set of implicit (obscene) injunctions and prohibitions  
and a process of socialising people into taking certain explicitly  
expressed norms. Tactics of overidentification, as employed by Laibach  
and the NSK â as well as more broadly within the Slovenia punk  
subculture of the 1980s that gave birth to the genre of âstate  
rockâ, or punk music incorporating elements of the discourse of self- 
managed socialism as critique through overidentification â work  
precisely by taking the stated norms of a given system or arrangement  
of power more seriously than the system that proclaims them itself.  
This operation occurs not through addressing the law itself, per se,  
or by breaking prohibitions (a more straightforward form of  
transgression), but rather by teasing out the obscene subtext that  
underpins the operation of the law and supporting social norms. A  
strategy of overidentification in order to be effective needs to  
appear total, and through that it âtranscends and reactivates the  
terror of the social fieldâ the spectral menace of totality gives the  
phenomenon sufficient âcredibilityâ to sow doubt and disquietâ.  
And this is precisely how Laibach/NSKâs works function, through  
giving an impression of totality (by claiming the status of the  
nation, or the state, or of being a global state in itself) in a  
manner that lends a degree of credibility to the menacing and  
disconcerting nature of their aesthetic production.

As Susan Buck-Morris explores in her work on transitions within  
collective imaginaries, dreamworlds become dangerous when they are  
used instrumentally by structures of power, which is to say as  
legitimation devices and discourses. Buck-Morris argues that socialism  
failed because it mimicked capitalism too faithfully. Laibach and the  
NSK operate by turning this process of mimicry against itself,  
disarticulating the potency of the dreamworld and utopian promise of  
Communism that had become embedded within a discourse of legitimation,  
mixed with the lingering presence of totalitarian and authoritarian  
elements. Indeed, it is often that the constituted forms of power  
existing with state structures are based upon the ability to draw from  
the energies and constituent power of social movements, of utopian  
dreamworlds, and render them into zombified forms of state. NSK/ 
Laibachâs interventions were so powerful within the Yugoslav context  
precisely because of how they amplified and made visible this process  
of rendering dreamworlds into discourses of state legitimation. The  
interventionsâ disconcerting effects provided ways of working through  
both the continued presence of authoritarianism and utopian energies,  
revealing how they are enmeshed in the workings of existing social  
imaginaries and political discourses.

Laibachâs work incorporates a good deal of official Yugoslav  
discourse on self-management and social democracy, using at times  
sections of Titoâs speeches and audio recordings, as well as  
particularly resonant forms of Slovenian history (such as the images  
and phrases of the anti-fascist partisans, which were quite important  
for the role they played in state legitimation). It is this reworking  
of Slovenian and Yugoslav history that invested their early works with  
such potency, through the way these familiar ideas were made strange  
and even uncomfortable to audiences through their compounding and  
juxtaposition with other elements (for instance by fusing them  
together with ultra-vÑlkisch imagery and Germanic phrasing, which was  
taken to be anathema to nationalist groups). Laibachâs response to  
this, particularly in relation to the continued controversy over its  
use of a name which was said to dishonor the âhero cityâ of  
Ljubljana, was to continue to adopt a stance of complete  
identification with Slovenia and Slovene identity, and thus to frame  
controversy and rejection of Laibach as the rejection of Slovenia  
itself. This created a form of ambivalent identification in which  
Laibach both bastardised (in their criticsâ views) Slovene identity  
while at the same time engaging in a quite militant assertion of that  
very Slovene identity (at points even declaring the German to be a  
subset of the Slovene). Through the politics and practices of  
overidentification, Laibach and the NSK hint towards the possibility  
of breaking the very process of identification, and this is why they  
were so disconcerting for many political actors in Slovenia in the  
1980s.

Laibach/NSKâs politics and practices of overidentification are  
displayed in unique and quite fascinating ways in their organisational  
practices, or at least the claims they have made about them. This  
shows through in their alleged structure offered by the NSK organigram  
from 1986, which takes the logic of alternative forms of  
institutionalisation to an almost absurd extreme. In the organigram,  
at least ten different departments in addition to a number of  
assemblies, councils, and organs, are all paired with or ruled over by  
the statement of âimmanent consistent spiritâ that covers and  
directs all the activity of NSK. This claiming of and  
overidentification with overly complex, arcane, and nearly  
incomprehensible state-like structures was observed by the âRough  
Guide to Yugoslaviaâ to bear a striking resemblance to the diagrams  
used within school textbooks to explains the countryâs bafflingly  
complex political system and structures. It is through this that the  
spectral menace of totality is activated, for in the case of the NSK  
it clearly is spectral because the NSK is composed of many more  
organisational components than it has ever possessed as members. This  
becomes more so in the case of projects such as the âState in  
Timeâ, in which the claiming of a state structure existing purely in  
time is enacted through overidentification with the organisational  
form and structure of states. In all of Laibach and NSKâs work there  
is never a clear-cut statement on organisation but rather an  
exploration of its ambivalences and possibilities; this is an approach  
that âdoes not support a utopian or dystopian organisation, but the  
fantasies of audiences that need to imagine that such possibilities  
still existâ.

The first phase of Laibachâs work is based around the usage and  
working through of elements and histories that are particularly  
resonant and provocative within a Yugoslav, and specifically Slovenian  
context, but often have little to no meaning outside of it. This  
perhaps comes to its highest point of concentration in the 1986 NSK  
joint production Krst pod Triglavorn (Baptism Under Triglav), which  
was a monumental drama roughly based around the history of the forced  
Christianisation of the Slovenes, interspersed in NSK fashion within  
many other layers of history and processed through the imagery of the  
avant-garde (for instance the recreation of Vladimir Tatlinâs  
proposed monument to the Third International as part of the set  
design). This production, which took place in a large state-sponsored  
theater, is interesting not just for the merits of its internal  
aesthetics, but also in how it illustrates the changing status of  
Laibach and the NSK within their social context (particularly given  
the greater importance of state-backing and commissions within  
socialist systems). That is to say that it marks the transition of  
Laibach/NSKâs work from its emergence within alternative and  
subcultural milieus to an acceptance, even if tentative and grudging,  
by state authorities. It characterises what Monroe refers to as the  
âLaibachization of Ljubljanaâ, or the process of confronting and  
reworking cultural boundaries and norms that occurred during the  
1980s; from the point of the banning of Laibach appearing under its  
chosen name, to their international success with which Laibachâs  
fanatical identification with Slovenia came to be realised in their  
being recognised as the most successful of Slovenia artists.

Laibachâs rise to prominence in the international mass media occurred  
at a point in time where attempts were being made to shift the image  
of Yugoslavia closer to one of a western âhumanistâ democracy.  
Laibachâs presentation of itself in terms of a cold neo-totalitarian  
front (although admittedly one that had softened its self-presentation  
somewhat from its earliest works, adopting more of a playful approach  
in some ways) functioned both to invoke forms of authoritarian  
legacies and images that the Yugoslav government wanted to reject,  
while at the same time becoming the most prominent and aggressive  
assertion of Yugoslav (and particularly Slovene) culture on a global  
stage (although the fusion of Germanic elements within Laibachâs  
aesthetic meant that they were often taken to be German by casual  
music fans, even more so during the 1990s with the rising popularity  
of German industrial bands). Laibachâs success showed that it was  
âactively connected to the zeitgeist, but specifically to those  
subterranean, unforeseen elements repressed by mainstream  
consciousnessâ, specifically the lingering presence of authoritarian,  
totalitarian, fascistic elements and militarism in the self-management  
system itself.

If the early phase of Laibachâs work was oriented around  
interventions which drew heavily upon local histories and references  
that only resonated within that context, then it shifted to one much  
more oriented to broader audiences reaching beyond the local or  
regional context and operating within global cultural and imaginary  
flows. It is this logic that underlies Laibachâs reinterpretation of  
the Queen song, as well as all the other covers and reinterpretations  
that Laibach have engaged in, such as their versions of the work of  
the Beatles (1989), Europe (1994), Opus (1987), and more recently  
Laibach, extending the âglobal state in timeâ project, have taken  
to reinterpreting the form of the national anthem itself (2006). In  
their reinterpretation and reworking of âOne Visionâ, Laibach are  
not attributing any particular political agenda to Queen per se, but,  
rather, are engaged in a process of amplifying the ambivalences and  
tensions that are already contained within Queenâs performance. It is  
not that Laibach brings a fascist aesthetic to bear on it, but that  
there is a similarity and underlying dynamic between totalitarian mass  
mobilisation and capitalist mass consumption. Laibach present this  
strangeness back to an audience as a reflection and fracturing of the  
structures and imaginaries through which that crowd has been  
constructed and constructs itself.

Laibachâs reworking and transformation of other artistsâ materials  
render it into, seemingly, almost totally different compositions in  
terms of their feel and nature through relatively minor changes in  
tone, orchestration, and lyrics. This approach is somewhat along the  
lines of what Deleuze and Guattari discuss as the formation of a minor  
literature, one based not on the development of a new representative  
form of language but, rather, working within the existing major  
languages and turning them against themselves to create strange new  
forms. Laibach and the NSKâs artistic productions, as they take part  
and intervene in the Yugoslav and regional social political context  
(and beyond that), create the basis for the formation of what could be  
described as a minor politics and the minor composition of social  
movement. Laibachâs reworking and fusing together of widely differing  
pre-given aesthetic and ideological elements, sources they treat as  
readymades be to transformed through recombination, can be understood  
as a particular form of what the Situtaionist International referred  
to as dÐtournement. DÃtournement, or, literally translated,  
âembezzlingâ, involves the combination of pre-existing aesthetic  
elements and ideas. But while dÃtournement has often been understood  
in a rather watered down way in terms of forms of culture jamming  
based on witty recombination and mixing of elements that work based on  
a fairly easily recuperable form of critique (for instance Adbusters),  
the work of Laibach and the NSK is much harder to make palatable. Most  
dÃtournement-based culture jamming relies upon maintaining a kind of  
critical distance from the elements used, while Laibachâs work  
functions through a total and fanatical identification with obscene  
subtexts of the elements they employ. In this sense, Laibach return to  
a much deeper sense of dÃtournement as the fundamental questioning of  
worth and communicability in any system of meaning, and the developing  
of tactics for monkeywrenching the fundamental structures of the  
production of meaning. Laibachâs amalgamations of ideas, images, and  
politics does not simply recombine them, but acts to transform the  
potential of the elements used to create meaning in relation to each  
other, and through that acts as a form of semiotic sabotage in the  
public sphere, at times critically damaging the ability of these  
symbols to operate.

Strategies of Overidentification

âHe who has material power, has spiritual power, and all art is  
subject to political manipulation, except that which speaks the  
language of this same manipulation.â
  â Laibach, 1982

But let us consider the role and practice of overidentification in a  
broader scope. Overidentification as a practice of political  
intervention might indeed function as the unifying nodal point of a  
Lacanian left, if indeed such a thing actually existed. Since that  
period of Laibachâs rise to international attention in the late  
1980s, this approach to cultural intervention has been adopted more  
broadly within political organising, and can be identified in the  
activities of groups such as the Yes Men, Christoph Schlingensief,  
Reverend Billy, the Billionaires for Bush, and many others. The  
argument for such strategies is that in the current functioning of  
capitalism, the critical function of governance is to be more critical  
than the critics of governance itself. Functionaries in a system of  
power, by presenting themselves as their worst critic, thus deprive  
critique of its ammunition and substance, thereby turning the tables  
on it. This is to go beyond both the arguments put forward by  
Boltanski and Chiapello; that critique has been subsumed within  
capitalism and that, within autonomist politics, reactive forms of  
social resistance and insurgency still remain a driving motor of  
capitalist development. This hints at the possibility that strategies  
for the neutralisation of the energies of social insurgency are  
anticipated even before they emerge. It is in this context that a  
strategy of overidentification is argued to be of particular value,  
throwing a monkeywrench in the expected binaries of opposition and  
response.

The most worked-out conceptualisation of overidentification as a  
strategy of intervention has been articulated by BAVO, an independent  
research project focused on the political dimensions of art and  
architecture, primarily based on co-operation between Gideon Boie and  
Matthias Pauwels. Although their take on these matters is far ranging  
(as can be seen by the varied contributions they gathered together for  
their edited collection Cultural Activism Today), there are a few key  
points that illustrate well their take on overidentification. First,  
that we live in post-political times where it is possible for artists  
and political actors to say anything, but what is said does not  
matter. Today, it is argued, artists are expected, and even demanded,  
to play something of a critical function, as long as one does not go  
too far in that function. In other words, so far as to question the  
fundamental ideological co-ordinates underpinning social relations, as  
by doing so âone is immediately disqualified as a legitimate  
discussion partner, treated like an incompetent, ignorant imbecile who  
stepped out of line and should better stick to his own field of  
experienceâ. From this BAVO argue, following Karl Kraus, that when  
forced between two evils, one should take the worst option. That is,  
to abandon the role of pragmatic idealists and to work to force an  
arrangement of contradictions to their logical end. In their words:

âInstead of fleeing from the suffocating closure of the system, one  
is now incited to fully immerse oneself in it, even contributing to  
the closure. To choose the worst option, in other words, means no  
longer trying to make the best of the current order, but precisely to  
make the worst of it, to turn it into the worst possible version of  
itself. It would thus entail a refusal of the current blackmail in  
which artists are offered all kinds of opportunities to make a  
difference, on the condition that they give up on their desire for  
radical change.â

BAVO adopts such an approach as they argue that other possible  
strategies, such as working on the grounds of marginal positions or  
creating forms of exodus, have already been anticipated and  
accommodated by systems of capitalist governance, and are therefore no  
longer useful as disruptive strategies. It is within this context that  
the work of groups such as the Yes Men becomes more interesting,  
precisely because, rather than putting forth forms of critique that  
can easily be brushed aside, their tactics of fanatically identifying  
with the neoliberal agenda thus pushes them further along to obscene  
yet logical developments of such ideologies. This is the stance  
Laibach and the NSK employed, one based not on critical distance but  
erasure of such distance. And it is through this erasure of distance  
that the Yes Menâs opponents are thrown off guard, precisely because,  
as BAVO describe it, this form of intervention forces such opponents  
to betray their articles of faith and passionate attachment to a  
neoliberal agenda just as its obscene subtext is made clear, and thus  
âmakes it [in this case, the WTO] â rather than its critics â  
appear weakâ.

BAVO summarise the most salient features of a strategy of  
overidentification as being based on these elements:

1. Owes its effectiveness to sabotaging dialectics of alarm and  
reassurance, drawing out the extreme and obscene subtext of a social  
system, eliminating the subjectâs reflex to make excuses for the  
current order to inventing new ways to manage it better.
2. Quickly shifts between different positions, overstating, mocking  
critique, and producing internal contradictions and points of tension  
that cannot hold together.
3. Sabotages easy interpretations of unproblematic identification  
either with or against the intervention, making it difficult to be  
recuperated in any direction.
4. Aimed precisely against the reflex to do the right thing.
5. Creates a suffocating closure within a system of meaning or  
relations, preventing escapes from the immanent laws and relations of  
that system.

A strategy of overidentification thus provides one possible antidote  
to what Peter Sloterdijk refers to as âcynical reasonâ, or a  
condition where people know that there is something fundamentally  
wrong but continue to act as if this is not the case. It is this  
cynical distance that Jeffrey Goldfarb diagnosed as so prevalent in  
the US, creating a sort of âlegitimation through disbelief,â  
although one could easily argue that this is much more widespread and  
just the condition that a strategy of overidentification aims to  
address and intervene within. One can certainly contest the  
desirability and effectiveness of such an approach, and such  
strategies have and continue to create a great deal of debate within  
political, artistic, and academic circles. Nevertheless, even if the  
conclusion is eventually reached that such is not an acceptable choice  
of interventionist strategy in most cases, it nonetheless seems  
valuable to learn from, especially in making a transition out of a  
time frame or frame of mind that is paralysed to find any method of  
intervention because all strategies are already caught in varying webs  
of power and therefore argued to be compromised. A strategy of  
overidentification operates precisely by turning this already- 
caughtness into an advantage by deploying and redirecting energies of  
capture and constituted power against themselves.

ÅiÅek, in an essay on Laibach and the NSK, comments that the  
reactions of the left to them has first been to take their work as an  
ironic satire of totalitarian rituals, followed by an uneasy feeling  
based on not knowing whether they really mean it or not. This is  
usually followed by varying iterations along these lines, wondering if  
they really do mean it, or whether they overestimate the publicâs  
ability to interpret their multiple layers of allusion and reference  
and thus end up reinforcing totalitarian currents. For ÅiÅek these  
are the wrong questions to ask and angle to take. Instead, it is a  
question of how Laibach and the NSK, as well a strategy of  
overidentification, more broadly intervene in a social context marked  
by cynical distance. From this perspective ÅiÅek asks:

âWhat if this distance, far from posing any threat to the system,  
designates the supreme form of conformism, since the normal function  
of the system requires cynical distance? In this sense the strategy of  
Laibach appears in a new light: it âfrustratesâ the system (the  
ruling ideology) precisely insofar as it is not its ironic imitation,  
but overidentification with it â by bringing to light the obscene  
superego underside of the system, overidentification suspends its  
efficiency.â

But the question remains to what degree a strategy of  
overidentification is marked by the conditions that led to its  
emergence? If overidentification was effective in its ability to  
disrupt circuits of meaning and the social imaginary within a  
particular social and historical context, it does not necessarily  
follow that it will operate similarly in other, possibly significantly  
different situations. Might then a transition within the imaginary of  
a politics formed around aesthetic interventions premised upon  
overidentification be necessary? This is perhaps what one sees in the  
development of Laibachâs work, which moves from operating as a  
disruptive mechanism in and against the Yugoslavian national imaginary  
during the 1980s, but then changes direction following the  
disintegration of the country. For instance, during the 1990s the NSK  
launched its âState in Timeâ project, where it claims to have  
created a global state and system of governance that is not based in  
physical space but only in time. This is at one and the same time a  
movement away from a strategy of disruption of one imaginary, towards  
a new form of imaginary disarticulation, and can in some ways be seen  
more to be based on a nostalgic identification with the state form  
that has been torn apart than an act of overidentification. In other  
words, it had become possible for Laibach and the NSK to mutate away  
from disarticulating the Yugoslav imaginary through overidentification  
and to begin a more positive assessment of the state dynamics it had  
fused itself too. This is perhaps not so surprising when one takes  
into account Sharon Zukinâs argument that it is only really possible  
to fully aestheticise a system or relations of production once it has  
passed its moment as the hegemonic form of production.

The question of transition and intervention within the social  
imaginary is transformed if one engages an argument such as the one  
made by Guy Debord, that rather than there existing a sharp and total  
distinction between Western capitalism and Communism in Eastern  
Europe, it was, instead, a question of the difference between the  
workings of a diffuse and a concentrated spectacle. In other words,  
not of totally different forms but rather of particular compositions  
of a similar underlying dynamic of power and exploitation. The  
question then becomes of how a strategy of overidentification either  
creates or restrains the possibility of intervening within the  
creation of collective imaginaries within the present. One can perhaps  
stumble towards the position that overidentification provides another  
tool in the conceptual toolbox for refounding and reformulating  
critique. It provides a possible answer to the dynamics analysed by  
Peter Starr in his exploration of the failed revolt in post-68  
political thought. Starr argues that modern revolutionary thought is  
premised upon radical breaks and departures from the past, one that  
suppresses previous notions of return and reappearance of social  
forms. And it is this dynamic of reappearance that gives way to  
fanatical obsessions with a dynamics of recuperation, as they run  
counter to the narrative structure of revolutionary politics. Starr  
argues that the ultimate direction laid out in post-68 thought moves  
toward a notion of, impossible, total revolution, and thus, failing  
there, moves towards forms of cultural politics based on subtle  
subversion. A strategy of overidentification, as well as of the Retro- 
Avant-Garde, working through the remaining utopian energies and the  
traumas of the past rather than repressing them, opens up other  
avenues for reformulating critique and intervention. A strategy of  
overidentification enacts a transition away from considering the  
dynamics of recuperation as problems to be avoided, to considering  
them as possibilities to be exploited and worked through, in, and  
against; but only against by working in them rather than seeking  
escape by recourse to an unproblematic outside. It is at this juncture  
where the question of transition is transformed into one of  
composition and recomposition, working from within the disarticulation  
and re-articulation of collective imaginaries.


NOTES
1. Laibach is a Slovenian avant-garde musical performance group that  
was founded in 1980. They were one of the founding members of Neue  
Slowenische Kunst (NSK) in 1984, along with IRWIN (painting) and  
Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater (subsequently changed their name to  
Noordung). Although this article focuses primarily on Laibachâs work,  
motifs, ideas, and images are frequently shared, developed, and  
elaborated by the various branches of the NSK, whether independently  
or as part of joint ventures.
2. For a good analysis of fascist aesthetics in relation to the avant- 
garde, see: Hewitt, A. (1993) Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics,  
and the Avant-Garde. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
3. The NSK TIMES. The blog of NSKSTATE.COM
4. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, (1984). Kundera  
wrote, "Whenever a single political movement corners power we find  
ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch." For Kundera, "Kitsch  
causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How  
nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How  
nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on  
the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch."
5.  For more on Laibach and NSKâs work in relation to this history  
and development of the avant-garde, see: Djuric, D. and M. Suvakovic,  
Eds. (2003) Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant- 
gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918 â 1991. Cambridge:  
MIT University Press; IRWIN, Eds. (2006) East Art Map: Contemporary  
Art and Eastern Europe. Cambridge: MIT University Press.; Badovinac,  
Zdenka, Ed. (1999) Body and the East: From the 1960s to Present.  
Cambridge: MIT University Press.
6. Monroe, A. (2005) Interrogation Machine: Laibach and the NSK.  
Cambridge: MIT Press. (p.120).
7. One can see a parallel between the development of state rock in  
Yugoslavia (bands such as O! Kult and Panktri) and developments in the  
British post-punk scene, such as Public Image Limited claiming to be a  
communications and production company, or artists moving towards an  
adoption and overidentification with yuppie aspirations as technique  
of critiquing them. A number of artists, particularly Joy Division,  
Human League, and Magazine, drew from state socialist and totalitarian  
imagery their work, employing a tactic creating ambivalent effects,  
although perhaps nowhere nearly as disconcerting at Laibach and the  
NSKâs work. Reynolds, S. (2005) Rip It Up and Start Again. Post-punk  
1978-1984. London: Faber and Faber.
8. Monroe, A. (2005) Interrogation Machine: Laibach and the NSK.  
Cambridge: MIT Press. (p.79).
9. Dreamworld and Catastrophe (MIT, 2000), Susan Buck-Morris
10. Shukaitis, S. (2007) âPlan 9 from the Capitalist Workplace:  
Insurgency, Originary Accumulation, Ruptureâ (2007) Situations: A  
Project of the Radical Imagination Volume 2 Number 2: 95-116.
11. There is a wide-ranging field of literature on politics and  
practices of identification, identity, and the politics of  
organization. For a good overview see Pullen, A. and S. Linstead, Eds.  
(2005) Organization and Identity. London: Routledge.. For an  
exploration of the politics of disidentities, see Harney, S. and N.Q.  
Nyathi (2007) âDisidentity,â Exploring Identity: Concepts and  
Methods. Ed. Alison Pullen, Nic Beach, and David Sims. London:  
Palgrave: 185-197.
12. Dunford, M., et al, Eds. (1990) Yugoslavia: The Rough Guide.  
London: Harrap Columbus. (p244)
13. Monroe, A. (2005) Interrogation Machine: Laibach and the NSK.  
Cambridge: MIT Press. (p113)
14. Monroe, A. (2005) Interrogation Machine: Laibach and the NSK.  
Cambridge: MIT Press. (p155)
15. Monroe, A. (2005) Interrogation Machine: Laibach and the NSK.  
Cambridge: MIT Press. (p75)
16. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1986) Kafka: Towards a Minor  
Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
17. Thoburn, N. (2003) Deleuze, Marx, and Politics. London: Routledge.
18. Shukaitis, S. (2008) âDancing Amidst the Flames: Imagination and  
Self-Organization in a Minor Keyâ Organization Volume 15 Number 5:  
743-764.
19. Djuric, D. and M. Suvakovic, Eds. (2003) Impossible Histories:  
Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in  
Yugoslavia, 1918 â 1991. Cambridge: MIT University Press. (p574)
20.  Stavrakakis, Y. (2007) The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory,  
Politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
21. CederstrÃm, C. (2007) âThe Lacanian Left Does Not Exist,â  
ephemera: theory & politics in organization 7(4): 609-614.
22.  Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello (2005) The New Spirit of  
Capitalism. Trans. Gregory Elliot. London: Verso.
23. For more information on BAVO, see http://www.bavo.biz.
24.  BAVO, Gideon Boie, Matthias Pauwels. Eds. (2007) Cultural  
Activism Today. The Art of Over-Identification. Rotterdam: Episode  
Publishers. (p19)
25.  BAVO, Gideon Boie, Matthias Pauwels. Eds. (2007) Cultural  
Activism Today. The Art of Over-Identification. Rotterdam: Episode  
Publishers. (P28)
26.  BAVO, Gideon Boie, Matthias Pauwels. Eds. (2007) Cultural  
Activism Today. The Art of Over-Identification. Rotterdam: Episode  
Publishers.(p29)
27. BAVO, Gideon Boie, Matthias Pauwels. Eds. (2007) Cultural Activism  
Today. The Art of Over-Identification. Rotterdam: Episode Publishers.  
(p30)
28. BAVO, Gideon Boie, Matthias Pauwels. Eds. (2007) Cultural Activism  
Today. The Art of Over-Identification. Rotterdam: Episode Publishers.  
(pp32-37)
29. Sloterdijk, P. (1998) Critique of Cynical Reason. Minneapolis:  
University of Minnesota Press.
30. Goldfarb, J. (1991) The Cynical Society: The Culture of Politics  
and the Politics of Culture in American Life. Chicago: University of  
Chicago Press.
31. Zizek has taken a keen interest in the activities of Laibach/NSK  
writing several papers, including: 'Why Laibach and NSK are not  
Fascists?' and 'The Enlightenment in Laibach'.
32. Zizek, Slavoj (1993) âWhy are the NSK and Laibach Not  
Fascists?â MâARS Volume 3/4. Available at www.nskstate.com.  
Ljubljana: Moderna Galerija.
33. Zukin, S. (1989) Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change.  
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
34. Debord, G. (1998) Comments on the Society of the Spectacle.  
London: Verso.
  Starr, P. (1995) Logics of Failed Revolt: French Theory After May  
â68. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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